Senior Full Stack Engineer, Key-Value Store & Messaging

It takes powerful technology to connect our brands and partners with an audience of hundreds of millions of people. Whether you’re looking to write mobile app code, engineer the servers behind our massive ad tech stacks, or develop algorithms to help us process trillions of data points a day, what you do here will have a huge impact on our business—and the world.

A Little About Us

At Yahoo, Cloud Runtime Engineering, a central technology organization, is driving a company-wide cloud and infrastructure transformation. The Key-Value Store & Messaging Platform team sits at the core of this effort, building and operating planet-scale distributed systems that handle millions of requests per second and manage petabytes of data globally. Our work directly impacts Yahoo’s most critical, revenue-generating products, ensuring they are fast, reliable, and future-ready.

A Lot About You

As a Senior Full Stack Engineer (IC4), you thrive on solving complex systems problems and building at a scale that few companies reach. You will work on platforms that power Yahoo Mail, Finance, Sports, Media, and Ad Platforms. This is a high-impact, hands-on role that offers real ownership and the opportunity to influence architectural decisions across the organization. You are an independent problem-solver who enjoys mentoring others and driving technical excellence.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and operate high-performance NoSQL and messaging platforms at massive scale.

• Leverage AI-driven insights and intelligent automation to proactively optimize system performance, reliability, and operational efficiency.

• Lead the development and ownership of globally distributed production systems, focusing on sub-millisecond latency and high availability.

• Drive "automation-first" engineering across CI/CD, automated testing, provisioning, and scaling.

• Solve multifaceted systems problems using sophisticated analytical thought and modern distributed technologies.

• Act as a technical resource for the team, leading design reviews, code reviews, and project workstreams.

• Partner closely with internal Yahoo product teams to deliver platform capabilities that enable rapid innovation.

• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to a culture of continuous learning and engineering rigor.

What You Bring

• Proficiency in using AI-powered development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Gemini) to enhance system design, debugging, and code optimization.

• In-depth conceptual and practical knowledge of Java systems programming, including robust testing and debugging.

• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems architecture.

• A proven track record of operating and improving large-scale production systems in a fast-paced environment.

• Sophisticated analytical thinking and a clear "ownership" mindset for the entire software lifecycle.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate effectively across globally distributed teams.

Basic Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience (Background check required for education verification).

• 5+ years of experience building Java-based services and RESTful APIs.

• 2+ years of experience in cloud-native environments (AWS and/or GCP).

• Experience with large-scale distributed data systems (NoSQL, streaming, or messaging) that power real-time analytics or AI-driven applications.

• Familiarity with event-driven architectures and pub/sub systems (e.g., Apache Pulsar, Kafka).

Preferred Qualifications

• Full stack experience with React and Node.js for building internal tooling and dashboards.

• Experience leading small project teams or specific workstreams within a larger engineering organization.

• Deep interest in contributing to open-source distributed systems projects.

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies; exercising sound judgment; working effectively, safely and inclusively with others